Initiation and the woman in green

In the post about MGTOW, it was brought to my attention that I had got the whole 'initiation' thing wrong. This neither surprises nor perturbs me.

It just informs me that my curiosity on the subject is as yet unsated.

So, here I am turning up for 'Initiation - Round 2'. I really, really want to understand this well.

It is correct that I know next to little about initiation. I am afterall, a woman. Bellita stated a while back that some women do go into their own 'initiation'. I kind of 'get' that. It is possible that I myself have experienced this initiation or seen it in other women, but maybe I have a different name for it.

But that aside, the only other 'initiation' I am familiar with is of the monthly variety where no matter how reasonable and sane a woman might be usually, all bets are off for a few crazy days on a lunar basis :-)
OK, I exaggerate a bit for effect, but there is some truth to this.

I shan't get into why the word 'lunatic' irks me somewhat, but in related info, BeijaFlor does a brilliant job of analysing the etymology of the word hysteria.

Much of what I know about male initiation is what I gleaned from the man who wrote the following (bold annotations are mine):

"As a result of initiation, a man starts his life in the village as a boy, and he returns to the village as a man. His journey has changed who he is and what he does. A man's journey starts in community and ends in community. Yet all his relationships are changed. This new man is given a new name by his elders. His community recognizes him by a new name because he is a new person to them.

The initiated man returns with a boon, often described by his name. This boon is his newfound identity and the talents and vision he finds in his ordeal. The boon is for the renewal of the community, which can atrophy in patriarchal rigidity. His gift, as well as giving his life meaning, is also meant to transform his community. Indigenous societies waited excitedly for the new man and his boon.

If a community is not open to his gift, as happens in an elderless, modern society, his message can bring estrangement, ridicule, even danger and death. 

So, this is what is happening in the current SMP? This is why some men are not coming back (again)?

Because they came back once and all they got was 'this lousy tee-shirt' and so they left again, saying: Veni vidi verti (I came, I saw, I turned around and kept it moving)?

 Correct?

He continues:

For instance, modern societies do not particularly want mature men. Mature men are not blindly obedient.
 Society: True alphas are a threat to society. Let's shame these alphas and keep the betas toiling.
(And then the betas are not rewarded for their good behaviour by this same society).

Am I getting it right so far? Or am I missing something crucial?

It gets better:

Yet a man who has been to the other side has a certain peace that is untouched by fear of death or its counterparts, scorn and debasement. This is because he has already faced death and found deep, inner values unshaped by popular opinion.

The mark of an initiated man is a deep peace that could be described as otherworldly. This is the peace that the Bible says passes understanding. This is Yoda's 'calm.' There is a detachment that seems like despair. Actually, it is a detachment that comes from a vision that the community does not yet understand, especially a modern community."

I think I saw this in Mark Wahlberg. And I was shaken to the core by it, in a good way. It was scary but familiar.

It starts to get a little fuzzy for me here:

A mature man seems to know that a higher power, at least a higher wisdom, exists because he has experienced it. Through initiation he has learned more and more of the topography of his inner life, the terrain of the Self, the wilderness within. This is the place of the soul. He has found that soul yearns for otherworldly answers, as a boy yearns for manhood.

Indigenous people saw the wilderness as the place where their higher power, their Spirit, dwelled. Initiation not only introduced a boy to his soul, the message from his elders was that his soul was intimately connected to Spirit. Elders experienced Spirit, assumed Spirit, taught about Spirit. Part of the initiatory experience was the explanation of how their people existed through the action of Spirit. Elders always taught this spiritual context, the myth of their people. In the elder's eyes, their people were continually upheld by Spirit, as each man's life and life direction would be connected to Spirit through initiation.

I believe that a modern man going through this ordeal of transformation takes a psychospiritual journey that finds both the potential of soul identity and the existence of something sacred beyond the ego's ability to understand. This something is sacred because it has the effect of bestowing a goodness to a man's life.

It is up to every man to go on this journey alone, to find out for himself. Then he can define Spirit for himself. As a psychologist, I can talk of the steps that a man has to take to painstakingly get himself ready for the wilderness. As an elder, I can tell a man he is meant for the wilderness. As a counselor, I have observed that most every man who has struggled with ordeal has emerged with a spiritual sense. As a man, I can attest to the Spirit that dwells there.

This Spirit is not the Spirit that is automatically in a church or in a religion, though this power can also be there. This is a bigger, more powerful, more mysterious Spirit who cannot be contained by one church or one religion. This is a Spirit of paradox. This is a Spirit who seemingly doesn't go by his own rules. This is the Spirit who teaches the mystery of tranformative pain. This is a Spirit of the wilderness, without and within. This is a Spirit only accessed from deep inside every man, from his own soul. This is the Elder of the elder.

OK, I won't try to understand this bit too much.

But I can identify with this part:

The journey of manhood is a psychospiritual one that demands modern man's attention. Society's and the world's survival depends on men consciously taking up this mission toward inner wisdom and purpose. Men who do not take the journey are dangerous men...

A man, though alone, never makes the journey just for himself. Though he may not realize this while in the midst of loss or ordeal, many will need the wisdom and active courage that he finds on the other side. Many will be lost, with less of a chance for healing, because he did not risk. A man's initiation is not a luxury for himself, like the holodeck of the Enterprise, with little consequence when the game is over. People are waiting for his presence though they don't know it. Many are counting on him though they've never met him...

Initiated men and women are the last real hope that we can save the earth and the dignity of every being on her. I believe we are in the middle of a tragedy for earth and its people. And this is a tragedy of our own making. In this case, it is not only men and women and children who are being wounded, even destroyed in their spirit. The earth itself is being grievously wounded.

Is he talking about...gulp...Red Pill men and women here?

I personally feel that the village has failed the initiated man if he does NOT feel the need to return.

But that's just me.

This is where I REALLY get lost:

"Out of nowhere, in place of where the tree had stood, appeared a tall woman dressed in black from head to foot....Never before had I felt so much love... There are no words to paint what it felt like to be in the hands of the green lady in the black veil." - Malidoma Some, Of Water And The Spirit.

Initiation brings a man to a different view of all his emotional and spiritual connections, especially to his relationships with women and the feminine...

Malidoma experienced Spirit as woman in his initiation. His elders expected this epiphany. They knew because they had found her before him. This is why they laughed at him when he made up a tree story about seeing an antelope on its hind legs. He was so embarrassed at being behind the other initiates that he made up a story after fruitlessly sitting in front of the yila tree for three days. The other initiates had all seen long ago. Many elders felt because he was raised by white men, so contaminated by our Western cultural values and even literacy, that he had lost the power "to see through the veil". One of the first things Malidoma saw when his vision pierced the veil was the loving green woman.

Who exactly is this green woman who replaces a tree?

Has any man seen her?

Could this be the Face of Mercy Bellita talks about?
Why is she in green?
Is she representative of Mother Earth?

Is the point of masculine initiation an attempt to connect with the feminine, in the truest purest sense or to get as far away from it as fast as possible with the result that the feminine comes seeking the initiate in an unsolicted manner?

On a related note, I notice that some men who would fit the description of 'mature' are known for acquiring inanimate objects later in life that are promptly 'femininsed'.
By this I mean the typical 'mid-life crisis' man who acquires a boat/yacht/fast car/luxury property and lovingly describes it as 'she's a beauty'.
Is this a symbolism of sorts or just a quirk of language?